Inexpertise
by Vertices
Summary: Akari and Yuma have a long-overdue talk, and kind of bond. Awkwardly. Implied sharkbaitshipping, vaguely running around of Mature Topics.


Akari knew the day would come, sooner or later - she had lost her virginity at sixteen, after all, an age Yuma, at fourteen, was fast approaching - but she had hoped futilely that it would be far in the future. He was still a baby to her, even if his shoulders were broader and he had started to grow into his big puppy eyes. It was the nature of an older sister to want to not want to think about things like this, to want to protect him from Adulthood as though he were still the baby who cried over skinned knees. Maybe there had been signs, but she had ignored them and justified them - not even consciously, but because it was easier to cope that way. Sure, he was at that age when teens started acting on hormones, but there was no way _he_ was interested in stuff like that. Not a kid like Yuma.

What finally made her realize, irrevocably, that he wasn't a kid anymore was the shirt he wore to dinner.

It was a faded old t-shirt, one of those articles of clothing she had told him to throw out and he had stubbornly insisted on keeping. It was an ugly shirt, stained and worn thin, with its neck stretched out from being pulled over his big head too many times - and it was the neck of the shirt that changed everything, because as Yuma leaned forward and reached across the table to grab another roll, the neck slipped down to reveal a corner of collarbone, a slice of shoulder. _Ask for someone to pass it, Yuma,_ she had been ready to say, one of her countless dinnertime chides that by now sprang to her tongue automatically when his manners were less than satisfactory, but she stopped, because just below the base of her little brother's neck, red and raw on his skin, was a _hickey_. She froze, reprimand forgotten on her tongue.

It couldn't - not _Yuma_ - maybe it was just a bruise? But she knew a hickey when she saw one; she had gotten a particularly bad one once, in high school, and spent a week carefully arranging hair and collars and scarves to cover it, had rubbed concealer over its ugly colors. Such a mark of shame was painfully out of place on Yuma's body: young, childish, immature, overexcitable Yuma. She realized she was gaping, and drew back, willing herself to look anywhere but at it.

Now wasn't the time to make a fuss over it, not with Baachan here - had she see it? No, Akari thought as she glanced at her grandmother, she didn't seem to have noticed. Yet.

"Yuma," Akari said sweetly. Too sweetly. "Can I talk to you after dinner?"

He glanced up from the roll he was devouring, suspicious; he recognized her tone, the one that said there would be hell to pay in his near future.

"Why?"

"Oh, we just have a few things to go over. It shouldn't take long."

(Actually, it would take as long as it had to, even if that meant wrangling an explanation from him by force-and that, she thought with a grim sort of satisfaction, was something he definitely didn't want.)

The rest of dinner passed in awkward silence. Akari was glowering at Yuma, Yuma was making a point of looking at anything but her, and their grandmother, occasionally making a small hum of satisfaction as she ate her rice, was either oblivious or pointedly ignoring them. His shirt had settled back to hide the hickey, but just the knowledge that it was_ there_ was enough. YumahickeyYumahickey had become a mantra she couldn't get out of her head, and she couldn't settle on being angry or horrified. There was a story there, a lazy afternoon of exploration or the urgency of a few moments alone, kisses that had turned into bites, lust and sensuality and things that were, as she judged,_ entirely inappropriate for Yuma_. It was almost enough to make her wonder - no, Akari, stop right there, don't go down this path - iftherewereothers.

(Or if he was hiding anything from her worse than heavy kissing.)

She had been picking at her food, too caught up in thought to make much use of it, but before she realized any time had passed, Yuma had cleared his plate and leapt to his feet with a clatter of chopsticks.

"Thanks for the meal!" he said hurriedly, dumping his dish in the sink and taking off.

"Hey!" she called after him, jumping up, but he was already halfway up the stairs. There was a pounding of footsteps, then the slam of his door.

"Something wrong?" asked her grandmother placidly.

"Huh? Uh... no. Everything's fine. I just wanted to go over some. Things. With him."

xx

Yuma, as it turned out, was in his room - not the attic but the one actually meant for sleeping in, complete with bed and working air conditioning. He had been curled crosslegged on the floor, turning over his D-Gazer in his hands, but he got hastily to his feet as she closed the door behind her. He of all people knew full well that an angry Akari was not someone he wanted to mess with.

"Hey, neechan," he said, going for nonchalance, but not too successfully. "I was just..."

"What," she said, crossing the room with a few quick strides, "the hell. Is this?" She grabbed a handful of shirt with one hand, pulling the collar down to expose the offensive mark, jabbing at it with an accusatory finger. He let out a little yelp of pain, and looked down with bewilderment. Then understanding filled his eyes.

"That's..." he trailed off, and began laughing uncomfortably.

"Yuma," she said strictly, in the tone she saved for particularly serious lectures, the one that said _you are in so much shit, buddy_. She took a step forward, and he backed away automatically, tripping on the side of his bed and falling onto it with an ungraceful thump. Now was the time to go in for the kill; if she started yelling, he might be vulnerable enough to confess everything. Neat and simple, just the way she liked it.

But then she paused. He _was_ fourteen, and she couldn't blame him for not wanting to broach the subject. She herself had been lucky to have a mother who was soft and understanding, who laughed as she explained the the most difficult of topics, and made her daughter feel safe and confident. It must have been tough with no one to talk to about this. His sister or his grandma? He had probably avoided bringing up any of this with them for the same reason _she_ had avoided giving the talk that she knew would have to happen eventually - because it was awkward.

"It's fine if you're... getting interested in this sort of stuff, but you can't go into it unprepared," she said, more gently. He had only been eight when their parents disappeared, after all, too young for the talk fathers were supposed to give. "You need to know what you're dealing with."

"I do!" he protested. "It's nothing complicated!"

"It _is_ complicated!" The emotional repercussions, the physical ones. Intimacy took exploring and fucking up to understand, but a proper foundation made all the difference in the world. Especially for a kid like him, who in her eyes was still small and helpless.

"Have you..." she began, and almost lost her nerve. It was the sight of the hickey that spurred her on, that abominable mark, the proof that someone had run their mouth over his kid brother, had bitten him and claimed him as their own. _I'm gonna beat the shit out of whoever did this_, she told herself. The thought was oddly reassuring.

"How far have you gone?" she amended. "Because I swear, if you've been - "

He fidgeted. "Just kissing! And, uh." He rubbed the hickey awkwardly, "this stuff. You know." His cheeks were tomato-red. "Making out."

She had been expecting the worst; the tension in her shoulders loosened a bit. Still, first base led to second, and second led to third, and third led to home runs, and if it were up to her she'd rather he not play baseball at all, thank you very much.

"Who is it? Kotori-chan?" She had always assumed Kotori would be Yuma's first attempt at romance; the two were always together, it was obvious that the girl liked him, and hey, Akari approved of her too. Still, it didn't sit right - it was hard to reconcile the angry hickey with the conscientious girl who had always been the one keeping him _out_ of trouble.

"N-No!" he said, seeming genuinely shocked at the idea.

"Cathy-chan?" She seemed more the biting type.

"No!"

"...Anna-chan?"

"_Definitely_ no!"

"Then who is it? Do I know her?"

"It's... it's not..." Yuma had been uncomfortable from the beginning of this conversation, but now he seemed especially so, squirming and staring determinedly at the wall. "It's not..." he flushed a shade deeper. "A girl."

Oh.

_Oh._

Well, that had stopped her train of thought right in its tracks. She hadn't even considered the possibility. It was almost a relief, in a way (has he had the baby talk, she had been wondering, do I need to give it) but at the same time, she didn't have much advice she could give on the subject. _It's fine,_ she told herself,_ the principles are still the same, right?_

"Alright, then," she said, not quite sure how to proceed. Yuma's gaze was still firmly averted, and he was biting his lower lip, a gesture that struck her all at once as sweet and sad and childlike. He looked almost _afraid_ of her reaction, she thought, and on some gut level that was heartbreaking. "Yuma," she said, softer. "You know that's fine, right?" He risked making eye contact, and she attempted to smile encouragingly. He half-smiled back. There you go, Akari. You've got this.

"In that case," she said, plopping down on the bed beside him. She briefly considered wrapping an arm around his shoulder, all chummy, then dismissed the idea. There was only so much that could be expected of her, and overt affection was never part of the deal. She instead folded her hands neatly in her lap. "Do I know _him_?" The tensing of his shoulders told her yes. She ran a checklist of his closest friends in her head, at least the ones she knew of. She could hardly imagine any of them as the perpetrator - but then again, until today she had no idea he was up to stuff like this at all.

"Tetsuo-kun? Takashi-kun? Tokunosuke-kun? Any of those?"

"No," he said, almost sullen now, as if he had hoped her interrogation would end but had resigned himself into accepting otherwise. He tucked his knees underneath his chin.

"Whats-his-face? That kid who came over for dinner once? Pink hair, ran out crying? How'd that turn out, by the way? Baachan was wondering if he was okay."

"Th - _fine_, and no, it wasn't him."

Who else could there have been? She was beginning to realize just how little she knew about his life. Was that her fault? She was busy and he was at the age where he didn't want to be watched over anymore, but still, should she have made more of an effort? If their mother was still around, would she be able to figure it out? Or would she have already known?

And then last-ditch inspiration struck her.

What was his name... Kamishiro, yeah, that sounded right. The kid who had gotten a lot of press a few years back for making it to nationals and then getting disqualified for cheating. He seemed like bad news, a real worry, but as she looked at the hickey she had a sinking feeling in her stomach that told her yes, she had gotten it this time. "What about... Ryoga-kun?"

Yuma was suddenly very interested in the carpet. "I..." he tried, and then his voice died out.

"So it _is_ him." She sighed a little. "Listen, there's nothing wrong with being curious about things like this at your age, but you still need to be cautious. You don't think he's..." how to word this delicately? "- taking advantage of you, do you?"

Yuma's shoulders squared, and suddenly he looked ten times more animated than he had since this conversation had begun. "He wouldn't do that!" he said heatedly. "He's a good person! He tries his best and wants to help me! He's caring, and kind!" His eyes was bright, his cheeks still flushed, his mouth set firmly in a line of absolute belief, and she realized that her assumption had been wrong, that this wasn't just two kids fooling around, that her baby brother really genuinely _cared_ about this guy, that he believed in him absolutely, and that maybe he even _loved_ him.

She wasn't sure if the thought was reassuring or terrifying.


End file.
